So you're saying that tax increases that start in 2014 have already impacted you? Suggesting you've dabbled in time travel?

Health insurance prices, drug prices, etc. skyrocketed once Obamacare was passed. I worked in a pharmacy for 12 years, and saw the effects firsthand, many drugs doubled and tripled in price.

There are plenty of other tax increases that I mentioned, also. Not to mention uncountable tax increases and fees by Democrats at the state level. Democrats in Colorado want to raise the income tax rate in Colorado from 4.63% to 5.35%. Fortunately, the tax increase has little public support and would get trounced this November if it's on the ballot.

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor - not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."

Guys, may I make a suggestion? After reading this thread and others like it, I was wondering if maybe the discourse would be more productive if we all agreed to refrain from disparaging name calling and such. It might allow for the more productive ideas and dialog to come to the forefront.

Guys, may I make a suggestion? After reading this thread and others like it, I was wondering if maybe the discourse would be more productive if we all agreed to refrain from disparaging name calling and such. It might allow for the more productive ideas and dialog to come to the forefront.

As the corporate-governance experts Charles Elson and Craig Ferrere write in a recent paper, boards at most companies use what’s called “peer benchmarking.” They look at the C.E.O. salaries at peer-group firms, and then peg their C.E.O.’s pay to the fiftieth, seventy-fifth, or ninetieth percentile of the peer group—never lower. This leads to the so-called Lake Wobegon effect: every C.E.O. gets treated as above average. With all the other companies following the same process, salaries ratchet inexorably higher. “Relying on peer-group comparisons, the way boards do, mathematically guarantees that pay is going to go up,” Elson told me. “Higher pay becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.”

It's been very clear to me for more than 6 months that the fed has no other option but to continue with QE. They just voted 9-1 to continue. More and more are starting to realize this also. The game in my mind is play hard but lock in profits because when it pops she's gonna blow harder than ever before. Rest assured the big guys will get out fast and furious. Don't try and time the top people. Don't be greedy or you will get burned badly.

I think there's a big part of your answer right there. This whole left/right lockjaw paradigm is the bull**** they feed the masses. They have no problem at all coming together when the proper entities want something to happen and are willing to pay for it. Like we learned in Watergate: "Follow the money." The money has been flowing steadily upwards for thirty years, regardless of who gets elected. It's been the biggest redistribution of wealth in history.

And now they want the money that's being "wasted" on the poor, in SS, Medicaid and Medicare.

Look at the Iraq War. Did we succeed? Was a critical national purpose fulfilled? No. Iraq is worse than ever. It cost the American taxpayer a trillion dollars and thousands of dead Americans, not to mention who knows how many dead Iraqis. The corporate mercenaries who followed our military into Iraq made fortunes. What do they care if the structures they build fall into the dirt once they leave? The fat cow government has already paid them. Party on.

Yes I know many of you money people worked hard as did I, and you survived and prospered where others did not. A fair economic system should always allow for an opportunity to succeed. Congratulations. Smoke that cigar, enjoy that Chateau Lafite 1989. But (mostly you guys) acknowledge your good fortune at having been born in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s, entering the male-dominated workforce 25 years later, and having had the privilege of riding a credit wave and a credit boom for the past three decades. You did not, as President Obama averred, “build that,” you did not create that wave. You rode it. And now it’s time to kick out and share some of your good fortune by paying higher taxes or reforming them to favor economic growth and labor, as opposed to corporate profits and individual gazillions.